Access is at around 3:15 p.m. At the train station in the small town of Bad Kleinen in Mecklenburg, investigators, Wolfgang Grams and Birgit Hogefeld, try to arrest two top terrorists from the Red Army Faction (RAF). Months earlier, they had been tracked down by an informant. While Hogefeld can be overpowered, Grams escapes and shoots at the officers. He meets GSG-9 man Michael Newrzella, who later succumbs to his injuries: the last casualty of the RAF. Grams shoots himself in the head and soon dies as well.
Bad Kleinen is the beginning of the end of the RAF
Two dead – the use of Bad Kleinen becomes a disaster for the security forces. And yet it heralds the victory of the state in the fight against RAF terror. Decades of murder come to an end here – five years later, the “urban guerrilla” announces its dissolution.
The blood trail of the RAF brings the German constitutional state to the brink of self-abandonment. Increasingly stricter laws on the fight against terror are passed in the Bundestag, “conspiratorial apartment” or “raster search” are words of the years 1978 and 1980, wanted posters hang in almost every post office at the peak of RAF terror, society is extremely polarized.
The first RAF murder occurs in 1971 on a police officer during an arrest attempt in Hamburg. Among others, Federal Public Prosecutor Siegfried Buback, Dresdner Bank CEO Jürgen Ponto and Employer President Hanns Martin Schleyer were killed in the “German Autumn”, the unprecedented series of terror attacks in 1977.
+++ Also read: “‘Operation Fire Magic’ and the night of death in Stammheim – the 1977 terror year ends with the ‘German Autumn’ +++
Ultimately, the Red Army Faction cannot assert itself with its violence, and in the end the terrorists also see it that way; altogether there were between 60 and 80 people. “The RAF was the revolutionary attempt by a minority, contrary to the tendency of this society, to contribute to the upheaval of capitalist conditions. We are glad to have been part of this attempt. The end of this project shows that we could not get through on this path”, write the remaining members in their self-dissolution 25 years ago. The writing is the final chord under a chapter of contemporary West German history that is as bloody as it is formative.
See the photo gallery above: “30 years ago, the GSG 9 attacked in Bad Kleinen – it was the beginning of the end of the RAF”.
Editor’s note: This series of photos was first published on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the RAF’s self-dissolution in April 2023. It was updated to mark the anniversary of the police operation in Bad Kleinen.